1Q84 Book 1: April - June by Haruki Murakami

It rained all Thursday morning, not a heavy downpour, but persistent rain. There had been no letup since the previous afternoon. Whenever it seemed about to stop it would start pouring again. June was half gone without a sign the rainy season would ever end. The sky remained dark, as if covered with a lid, and the world wore a heavy dampness.

Just before noon, Tengo put on a raincoat and hat and was headed out to the local market when he noticed a brown padded envelope in his mailbox. It bore no postmark, stamps, or address, and no return address, either. His name had been written with a ballpoint pen in the middle of the front in small, stiff characters that might have been scratched into dry clay with a nail-Fuka-Eri's writing, without question. He tore it open to find a single bare sixty-minute TDK audiotape cassette. No letter or memo accompanied it. It was not in a plastic case, and the cassette bore no label.